Individuals and big corporations are hosting holiday events dedicated to "ugly" or "tacky" Christmas sweaters. Fashionable retailers like Bloomingdale's, H&M and
Abercrombie & Fitch
are putting snowflake and reindeer styles in windows and catalogs. Meanwhile, thrift stores and websites are out of stock of vintage designs, the more elaborate the better.

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Listen: Holiday sweaters are making a comeback -- even on the runway -- after two years of declining sales, reports Rachel Dodes.

Brian Philippoi,
a 26-year-old employee of a Web design firm, wore a bulky cream sweater with a bright alpine print along with dark skinny jeans and sneakers to a recent party. He describes the sweater as "very 1960s Swiss ski resort." "It's like walking a Great Dane," he says. "You have to show it who's boss."

Traditional knits, such as those with Fair Isle patterns, have sold well all year. For Christmas, some retailers are attaching jingle bells, Christmas tree buttons—even lights—to cater to fans, both genuine and ironic. High-fashion stores draw some lines. Variations that are "alpine-inspired, not Christmas tree ornament-inspired" are a "key item of the season," says Stephanie Solomon, fashion director at Bloomingdale's. The last time Christmas sweaters were big was in the mid-1980s, she says.

Searches for "ugly Christmas sweaters" are up 30% in December compared with December last year, according to Google's research tool Insights for Search. It's "one of the most-searched-for terms among people looking for information about sweaters," a Google spokeswoman says. On eBay this year, someone paid $282.59 for a sweater with three reindeer across the front, an increase from the website's most expensive holiday sweater last year, which sold for $200. Ebay's sales of holiday sweaters are 24% ahead of last year.

Dunkin' Donuts is giving $60 gift cards to people who post pictures of themselves on Twitter by Dec. 22 in holiday sweaters that are "kitschy or cute or glamorous or ho ho horrible," says a company spokeswoman.

AOL sponsored a holiday networking party in Brooklyn, N.Y., for technology executives, who were encouraged to "channel your inner kindergarten teacher" and wear a festive sweater. There were iPads on hand that people could use to upload photos of themselves in sweaters onto Facebook and other social-networking sites.

Crunch gym chain hosted a "Be a Holiday Sweater!" party in its 25 locations last week and is running a Web promotion were people can put an image of their face with a digital tacky sweater and post the image online.

The Christmas sweater started out as homemade, became a mass-market hit in the 1980s and has been a dependable seller ever since, even though "fashion snobs look down their noses at them," says David Wolfe, creative director at the Doneger Group consulting firm. For many, they bring back memories of grandma and a time of year when "everybody just drops their sophistication and goes for the heart."

Randall Ferguson,
a 27-year-old who grew up in Michigan, began hosting "ugly sweater parties" in college. "It started out as a way for us to mock our moms," he says. For a party he hosted last week in his Manhattan apartment, Mr. Ferguson wore a snowman sweater that he bought for $10 earlier this season on
eBay.

Mocking mom?
Jean Ferguson,
Randall's 60-year-old mother and a retired nurse in Whitehall, Mich., says her five Christmas sweaters are "a way to start the season as soon as I can and keep it going as long as I can." She wears them from November to January. As for her son's party, Ms. Ferguson says she doesn't think he ever truly found the sweaters ugly. "I know in his heart that for him this is a way to pull a little bit of Christmas spirit."

The website myuglychristmassweater.com boasts a "contest winning" collection of "hideously ugly" sweaters. A vest decorated with the head of a stuffed-animal reindeer with light-up antlers is powered by two double-A batteries and costs $79.99.
Jeff Gray,
a 46-year-old Atlanta ad executive, bought two of the vests. He and his partner won a sweater contest at a local theater, with a prize of a spa package, coffee and show tickets.

Many thrift stores were caught empty-handed this season. Seeing it was late to the holiday-sweater trend, Buffalo Exchange, a chain of 40 vintage boutiques, put out an APB on its website and on Facebook. Customers at the store's East Village location were "desperately seeking goofy Christmas/Holiday sweaters for men and women," wrote the company's marketing director, Michelle Livingston. "You know the ones... snowmen, wreaths, sequins and bows. The flashier the better!" "It's disappointing that we haven't had them for our customers," says Amanda Garrett, manager of the East Village store.

"At this point, I've given up," says Eric Foster, a 27-year old production coordinator from Brooklyn, who had hoped to find a green sweater, preferably involving snowflakes and reindeer, to wear to holiday gatherings this year.

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